Cruz sat behind his heavy oak desk on the second floor of the quarry office, swirling a glass of cheap bourbon. Outside the high plexiglass window, the old rock-crushing plant looked like a fortress. Floodlights cut through the dust, two armored Humvees guarded the iron gates, and forty of his best men roamed the yard with rifles strapped to their chests. He ruled this valley, sabes? Nobody fucked with Cruz. Then came the roar. Down the mountain road, a heavy engine screamed—a flatbed truck barreling down the incline with no headlights, gas pedal pinned to the floorboards. "What the fuck...?" Cruz muttered, standing up and pressing his hands against the glass. CRASH! The flatbed smashed through the chain-link perimeter gate like a cannonball, throwing sparks and chain links fifty feet into the air! It plowed straight into the center of the yard, crushing two fuel drums before slamming into a mound of crushed gravel and killing the engine. "Intruder! Hold your fire! Check the cab!" a guard screamed over the blaring alarm sirens. Cruz ran out onto the steel catwalk, resting his hands on the railing, teeth gritted in pure rage. "Vance? Hector? Who the fuck is driving that rig?!" A squad of five militia guys rushed the back of the flatbed, rifles raised, pulling back the heavy tarp covering the truck bed. The second the floodlights hit what was inside, two of the guards staggered back, gagging and throwing up on the gravel. "Boss!" one of them shrieked, his voice cracking like a terrified kid. "It's... it's Hector, man! Oh Jesus, it's Hector!" Cruz marched down the metal stairs, his heavy boots echoing off the iron structure, shoving his own men out of the way to reach the tailgate. When he looked down into the bed of that truck, Cruz’s heart froze right in his ribs. Hector—his top lieutenant, his meanest enforcer, the guy who ran his muscle—was chopped up like roadkill. His left leg was gone from the knee down, his throat was open, and his gold chain was wrapped around his cold, bloody knuckles. Pinned straight through his tactical vest with a thrower knife was a slab of thick cardboard. Cruz leaned in, his face going pale under the harsh glare of the floodlights, reading the sloppy red handwriting written in his lieutenant's own blood: "HEY BITCH. YOUR THREE DOGS DIE EASY, AND YOUR LIEUTENANT CRIED LIKE A LITTLE GIRL BEFORE I TOOK HIS LEG AND HIS THROAT. I'M CARVING MY WAY TO YOUR OFFICE NEXT, YOU COCKSUCKER. GET ON YOUR KNEES AND PRAY." Cruz ripped the cardboard off the knife, his hands shaking violently—half from unbridled, blinding rage, half from a cold spike of pure, raw terror. "Fifteen guys..." Cruz whispered, his voice trembling as he stared into the dark treeline up the ridge. "I sent fifteen guys up that hill..." "Boss, what do we do?!" a guard yelled, panic spreading through the yard like wildfire. "Vance ain't answering! The whole ridge squad got wiped out! Someone's coming down the mountain!" Cruz turned around, his chest heaving, his face red as a beet as he screamed at the top of his lungs, "LOCK THE GATES! Get on the heavy machine guns! Man the towers! NOW!" He clutched his pistol, looking back out into the pitch-black highway beyond the shattered gate. He had forty men, heavy armor, and watchtowers. But for the first time in three years... Cruz felt like the prey.

Blood on the cardboard